


some things can only be said face to face

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Birthday, Coulson is a human disaster, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Future Fic, POV Phil Coulson, Sappy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 19:37:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7374715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three phone calls. Three very different birthdays for Daisy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	some things can only be said face to face

**i.**

No one talks at the other end of the line but Coulson knows it’s Daisy calling.

It’s late, two am, so he guesses technically it’s not her birthday anymore. Then it occurs to him that it might be earlier wherever in the world she is right now.

“Daisy?” he asks, immediately.

Is he losing his mind? Is he going to answer every phone call like this? He looks at the collection of newspaper clipping in the files all over his bed. He needs to get a board where he can rearrange them and see the whole picture.

There’s no answer at the other end of the line.

Maybe he is losing his mind, and this is a hallucination.

Daisy calling him on her birthday, it seems a little too convenient, after what already builds up to months of chasing her. No trail, no clue. She’s gone. He lost her.

And on a night when he is alone, when Mack is not here with him.

What are the odds?

But what if he is not making this up? What if she is on the other side of the line? He pictures her, pale and with her scars still barely healed, like the last time he saw her - and how unfair of her, that she didn’t let him know somehow that this was the last time.

“Daisy, I…”

What if she is lonely or hurt? What if she just needs to hear his voice? What an absurd idea, Coulson shakes his head, embarrassed at himself.

What face would Daisy make if she were calling him like this? Coulson can’t picture it. He’s been trying, for weeks and weeks, imagine her face, all the time. But it keeps slipping away from him, or like something too big to see it clearly. He holds on to the couple of surveillance pictures the authorities have managed to snap. Too far, too grainy. She could be anyone. Where’s Daisy?

Even if he were talking to a hallucination he wouldn’t know what to say.

There’s so much to say.

He could tell her all the things he has been rehearsing these last couple of months, whenever he fantasized about finally having the chance to talk. All the reasons why she should come back. Tell her that she doesn’t have to do this alone. Repeat that none of what happened was her fault, and maybe this time she would be ready to believe.

He could tell her things that he’s too much of a coward to say face to face.

Or he could also chastise her, shout at her, tell her how angry he is.

Or how much he misses her.

But that would all be for his benefit.

Not today.

“Happy Birthday, Daisy,” he says, simply.

After a few seconds the line goes dead.

Coulson decides it must have been a hallucination after all.

 

**ii.**

The call surprises him.

He’s distracted, lulled by the tedious task at hand, and is not expecting anyone to make contact for the rest of the day.

“How is it going?” Daisy asks, mission-voice, obviously trying to hide something underneath, he can feel it in the slightly stiff tone, even in her best team captain voice.

“I think he’s done with his shifty meetings for the night,” he replies, looking at the dark window across the street, the target’s house. He sighs a bit. Another boring night.

“I’m sorry to bother you, I know you’re on a mission.”

“You’re not bothering me.”

It’s not a question of “navigating” Daisy, she doesn’t need navigating. She really does believe she is a bother to others and Coulson has gotten used to (and he likes to) reassuring her that’s not the case.

“I’m sorry I’m missing your birthday,” he tells her.

“That’s fine, we’re not doing anything special. I’m mostly babysitting Mack and Elena so they won’t get too unprofessional on the base.”

“Sound more fun than my night.”

She chuckles. “Sorry. Steakouts suck.”

“It’s necessary,” he replies.

They are a small team without many resources, so they all have to pull their weight. Do menial jobs like this from time to time. And, though he doesn’t tell Daisy this, he got pretty good at surveillance while he spent months chasing after _Quake_.

Suddenly that feels like a lifetime ago, him and Mack always on the street, chasing after rumors and fearing they were chasing after ghosts. Coulson thought he’d stop feeling this kind of pressure on the chest once he got Daisy back home, once the team was back together again. But the Daisy-shaped anxiety hasn’t gone away. He still feels like he did back them, chasing, chasing. It bothers him.

“I was thinking about you,” he tells Daisy, not sure what possessed him to admit that.

He has been noticing a strange tension between them lately. He can’t put his finger on it. 

It’s not that they don’t work well together - after what happened with Talbot and the ATCU, how Daisy ended up in a cell and he ended up in handcuffs for trying to get her out of it, he knows he is one of the few people Daisy truly trusts when it comes to her mission.

“I like hearing that,” Daisy says, her voice sounding uncomfortably touched all of the sudden. She is normally tightly wound, keeping whatever sadness and pain was in her recent past locked down, so she could focus on the mission. And then there are those moments where she would be all raw and open, like she never was before… before.

Coulson wants to tell her that people think about that, that she doesn’t need to sound so surprised to find out she matters. All those months chasing after her, the way the whole team collapsed after she left…

_You matter a little too much_ , Coulson thinks, smiling to himself. Across the street someone turns on the lights and he tenses up, leaning over the window, his body alert before he is. But it turns out it was just a quick bathroom visit.

“Coulson?”

“Sorry,” he mutters. “Mission stuff.”

“I am bothering you,” she says, lighter.

“If anything you’re keeping me awake,” Coulson replies.

He expects a chuckle (Daisy has been using nervous chuckling a lot since she’s back, like when they first met, and it took Coulson a bit to figure out it was also an effective way of not having to look people in the eye).

“Last year, on my birthday…” she starts. But then the sound dies down, and Coulson knows she can’t pick the words.

“I know,” he tells her.

She has already tried to apologize for having left, even if Coulson understood - eventually, after a long time of being angry at her - that leaving was nothing she should apologize for.

“I was being unfair that time, I know.”

“Daisy-”

“I just wanted to hear your voice.”

“Oh.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that.

“I guess it’s easier saying certain things on the phone,” she says, and there’s the little chuckle and Coulson can picture her dropping her head perfectly. Coulson can picture her perfectly. And it’s like all those months chasing her, when all he did was that - picture her.

“You didn’t say anything that time,” he points out.

A little raspy noise.

“I mean _now_ , Coulson,” she tells him, like she’s a bit frustrated with his inability to follow her train of thought.

“I see.”

But he actually doesn’t, she’s lost him a bit.

“But if you can’t say something to someone’s face then… what’s the point? You know what I mean?”

He knows what she’s thinking about, and though she is somehow right, he agrees, he doesn’t want her to lose that as well.

Coulson moves the phone closer to his ear, feeling his pulse quicken.

“I think so.”

“ _Really_?”

He pictures her raising an eyebrow at him.

He pictures her.

“I - I don’t know,” he confesses.

There’s a silence on the other side, and Coulson fears he’s ruined it, whatever “it” was.

But then he hears Daisy’s soft, kind laughter.

“That’s fine, I’m sorry,” she says. “That’s what I meant about doing it face to face. When are you done with the surveillance?”

“In a couple of days.”

“I knew that,” she states, like she had forgotten. “I guess I just wanted you to wish me happy birthday.”

“But I haven’t done that yet.”

“No, you haven’t.”

He feels too self-conscious all of the sudden.

“That’s fine,” Daisy says, magnanimous. But Coulson pictures her disappointed face. “We’ll talk when you get home.”

A clicking sound and his chance is gone.

He looks across the street. Darkness still.

He promises himself he’ll tell her then, when he gets back home.

Happy Birthday and… the other thing. She should know she deserves to be told face to face.

 

**iii.**

The call catches him when he was cleaning the kitchen table.

Coulson loves baking but it’s such a messy affair. There’s powdery stuff and bits of damp dough all over the place. And Coulson is not the most tidy cook ever.

“I thought you were on the air,” he tells Daisy, checking the time. She should be halfway the Atlantic right now. He panics a bit, thinking he won’t have everything ready.

“I am,” she replies. “I’m bored.”

Coulson smiles at her impatience.

“You’re smiling,” Daisy accuses.

He likes the idea of Daisy picturing him, from so far away.

He takes off his apron, with some difficulty to keep the phone in his hand.

“How was the meeting?” he asks. He received the official preliminary report a couple of hours ago, but Daisy’s intuition on the subject is what matters.

He hears her click her tongue.

“Useless, as predicted,” she replies with a leader’s weariness. Coulson knows that tone well. “Wakanda was the only country which supported the repeal of the last articles in the Accords.”

“I’m really sorry,” Coulson says, knowing how much this matters to her.

He lets her sigh at him through the line.

The Accords stopped having meaning a couple of years ago, but the letter dies after the spirit does, and he knows what a symbolic coup it would be for the Inhumans to have that piece of legislation finally scratched.

He wishes he could do something for her.

He looks at the watch again, calculating how long until she gets here.

“I miss you,” he tells her.

“You always say that.”

“It’s always true,” he says, trying to stay cool under his wife’s teasing.

“How much did you miss me?”

“Send me word when the Quinjet touches down. I’ll start running the bath.”

“ _That much?_ ” she says and laughs a bit.

Coulson knows after a long trip and a disappointing meeting a nice hot bath will help her shed that weariness (he knows her, okay). And well, personally, he can’t wait to get her naked and lap soap over her body and thread his fingers through her short hair and his hands skimming across her chest and - yes, he has missed her quite a bit, too. It’s been a goddamn week.

“It’s your birthday after all.”

There’s a pause. For some reason Coulson gets this idea that she must be frowning at something.

“You haven’t planned like, a party or anything. Because I don’t think I’m in any condition-”

“Don’t worry, the official party is tomorrow at HQ, Elena is taking care of everything. Tonight is all for you.”

He imagines the pleased face Daisy is making. Even after years, he still watches how it startles her, people doing nice things for her, Coulson doing nice things for her.

“Do I get a cake?” she asks greedily.

He looks down at his clothes, the traces of sugar icing over his sweater.

“What do you think?”

“I think you’ve really missed me,” she teases.

“I’m sorry about the conference,” he tells her, more seriously now. “But you’ll get there. I know you will.”

“I will,” she repeats, sounding shy.

He can picture her lost in thought, drawing up plans to fight against anti-Inhuman prejudice, her mind set so far ahead, Coulson is always afraid of not being able to keep up. He guesses that’s part of why he loves her.

“Daisy?”

“Uh?”

“Happy Birthday,” he tells her.

The other thing is implied.

But he’ll say it when she gets home anyway.


End file.
